On 08/31/2011 05:45 PM, LLLActive@GMX.Net wrote:
Hi all,
I have an openSUSE 11.4 32Bit system installed on its own disk. Additionally attached are 2 mirrored 2-Port 3Ware raid cards, striped as Linux Raid, then mounted as /home/Data (ext4).
The softraid was mounted after the OS installation within fstab, because I wanted Data to be on the raid and not be dependent on or be part of the OS FS directly.
I've never had a softraid before. Hard-Raid recover is painless with 2Ware, and immune to failing OS. I got a backup of the 4 TB raid; it has 2 TB data and a restore takes quite a while.
Now I lost my OS Installation, the disk is unresponsive. Before I go ahead, I was wondering which way to go.
I am planning to install a new system and just hope the soft raid will be there when I partition. What should I watch out for? I have searched and read some ways to recover defective raids in the TLDP.org and others, but the raid was ok. It was a mount as /home/Data directory. I will mount it after the new installation as /home/Data again. Will that work ok? How does the raid-setup work? Is the raid-partition info kept on the disks? There is no controller with bios as in hardware raid to store the Linux softraid info. As far as I know, HW-raids save the raid-partition info on the disks and on the controller. How is it in softraid?
:-) Al
Oh no! Seriously, I think you will be fine. Both dmraid (fake raid) and mdraid (software raid) are mature and robust enough to easily rebuild/recover for a mirrored raid failure if there is a complete crater of one of the disks in the array. If I understand your post well enough -- you don't even have that problem. If I have this straight you have: ---------------- Computer OS Disk (failed) 3Ware - 2 port striped (OK) ]______ mirrored mounted as /home/Data 3Ware - 2 port striped (OK) ] ---------------- If the OS disk is what is dead, you should be able to reload the OS on a new disk without even connecting the 3Ware controllers. After you are happy with the new install, then just reconnect/plug in the 3Ware controllers and re-create the mirrored array using the same config as you had originally. I have never had much of a problem getting a new install to recognize and use and existing software raid array. You can even move them machine to machine without a problem. Fakeraid (dmraid) is a bit more of a problem to move from box to box due to the BIOS dependent array setup and rebuild. Others may need to fill in the fine point, because I haven't ever done the recreation of a mirrored set of striped arrays before on a new install. However, from the standpoint of just reloading the OS and then recreating the mirror of the 3Ware controllers and mounting as /home/Data -- it doesn't seem that bad. Good luck! -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org